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338 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

is almost without parallel in our times. What makes it so
remarkable is that Ada, although a full-blooded Eskimo woman,
was not any more equipped by training or previous living to go
through the experience she had, than any white woman used to
out-of-door living.

Ada was educated at a Mission School at Nome. She was used
to the comforts that people have these days in any northern city.
She did not have the background of tribal living. The only knowl-
edge she had that made her valuable to an expedition was skill in
sewing on furs, for she had earned part of her living in the city
by making skin winter clothing for sale to the miners who traded
there.

We are likely to think of the Arctic as a man’s country. Only
one other woman’s name has been linked with the far north to any
extent. That is Lady Franklin—the wife of the British explorer,
Sit John Franklin. Strangely enough Lady Franklin was never in
the land that owes so much to her interest. She was a woman of
indomitable will which she turned to a single purpose. Through
her efforts ship after ship was sent out from England into the
Arctic to find some trace of the lost Franklin expedition—and
solve the mystery of the death of her husband. She kept alive the
interest in the fate of Sir John for years and the Franklin search
was finally successful. They found relics of the ships and the
journal of the Commander. The search itself added greatly to our
geographical knowledge of the Arctic.

It seems a far cry from Lady Franklin, a product of a highly
civilized time to the so-called primitive Eskimo woman, Ada
Blackjack.

Yet the same determination—the same single purpose was present
in them both. In Lady Franklin, love for her husband was behind
years of effort to unravel the mystery of his death, and justify his
expedition. In Ada, left alone, love of her son kept her at her
task of living—the same determination, the same steel-like quality
and iron will kept these women to their self-appointed task. The
force behind Ada’s will to live was her mother instinct. She was
determined to get back to Nome to see her five-year-old boy,
Bennett.

So each, in her own way, worked for a single purpose—with no
dissipation of energy and in this lay their strength and success.